submiting once on a forum ?

Anon

i have made a forum based on PHP3 and mySQL, works fine. But i have the problem that people press the submit button several times, so the post is posted twice or more sometimes giving more work for deleting them.

Is there anyway how to stop this ?
Thanks in advance.

Anon

I'm new to PHP but here is my shot at answering your question.

When your code creates the form for the new thread or reply, then it should also create an unique_id and this variable unique_id should be set to a hidden field in the form. Unique_id should also be a field in your database.

Then when the user sends his data you only need to check whether or not the unique_id from the form is already saved in your database. If the unique_id is null in the database, then update the data from the form. If it isn't, that means the data has already been saved so give the user a warning.

Hope I could help.

-Scott

Anon

Your solution works in a limited scope: it prevents going back from the form handling page to the form submit form and submitting again. A good implementation of unique_id's in hidden fields can track the user across the entire site, but is broken when he leaves the site, then returns. With php4 and sessions you can continue tracking him when he returns to your site. Unfortunately I cant think of another solution with php3 but I know that some have implemented the equivalent of sessions in php3. Perhaps someone else can point you to the information.

Anon

that is not usefull, because i dont have the that Id because, it only nows the Id once im inserting it because 2 people can be posting in the same message and cant block one message because other user can be writing at the same time.
Thanks anyway

Anon

Woah....

What?

"2 people can be posting in the same message and cant block one message because other user can be writing at the same time."

I think your logic is a little confused.

Every new message or thread needs it's own unique_id. If some one writes a reply to a thread then it also recieves it's own unique_id. And if someone else writes a reply at the same time, then that too gets it's own unique_id. Look at the variable pairs used for this board. My browser is showing the following: http://www.phpbuilder.com/forum/read.php3?num=1&id=109155&thread=109133

Here you see the data being sent per "get". With a form it would more likely be sent per "post". There is the post id=109155, that was your/benja's answer and there is the thread id=109133. That was your/Benja's original question. So you see there is something wrong with your logic.

If you look at the source code of this page you'll see the following.

Here you can see some of the variable passing tim is doing, but I don't think he checks for multiple clicks from the same form. I'll check this now.

-Scott

Anon

Yep...he is checking for multiple entreis of the same form.

-Scott

Anon

Testing sorry.....

Anon

So tim is testing the reply for multiple submitions by checking the subject field and my name or userid or data in a cookie. I tried submitting again under http://www.phpbuilder.com/forum/read.php3?num=1&id=109155&thread=109133 and got an error. Then I added "Testing" to the subject and because it's not the original subject text the program let me add a reply. (This one)

Hope I could add some light to your programming delimma.

-Scott

Anon

i was in a hurry before, but i'll try to explcain better now.
you can check the forum at www.poketienda.cl
In the forum you have the PantetID that you call thread, and then it gives child id's starting from 1 to the number of replys of that Thread.
So if im replying to id=1 (the first post) i cant assign it the number id=2 to the reply until they press the Submit button because somebody could reply to that message before that the first user finished. So when you press the Submit Button it checkes witch was the las child id, and assigns it the last child_ID + 1 to the reply.

Also i want to notice that my forum works a bit different than this one, because i dosent use the Tree structure and you cant change the subject. Excuse me for my bad english Scott.

Anon

Ok I understand what your doing now. But why can't you make a field in your data base that would hold a unique_id variable and create the unique_id variable and hide it in the form. Let's go through the scenario again. Your way if I understood was:

User x writes a thread, thread_id = 1.

User y answers the thread, thread_id = 1, child_id = 1.

User z answers same thread, thread_id = 1, child_id = 2.

My way is:

User x requests to write a thread. create unique_id = 1abc(not an actual uniqid as would be created by the uniqid() function) and hide it in the form. After he writes the thread and sends it back to the server, you save unique_id in the database with thread_id.

User y wants to answer. Before the form was generated again a unique_id was made. unique_id = 2def. User y sends data back and unique_id and thread_id = 1 and child_id = 1.

User z also wants to answer the same thread and when his/her form was created it too had a unique_id variable. Then when user z sends the data back it too is stored in the db.

So now the fun part. When the data is sent back, the data base must be checked for the unique_id. If it is there then the data is doubled.
It's that easy. Check out http://www.phpbuilder.com/manual/function.uniqid.php Here the function uniqid() is explained.

Lots o luck.

Scott

Anon

Scott i mend it without getting junk data into the database.... it was too simple.
this is the script i used.

//***********
//actual time in seconds
$date=time();

//select from table if that user posted in the last 20 seconds
$sql="SELECT * FROM foro_mensajes WHERE user='$user' AND date > ($date-20)";
$result = mysql_query($sql);

//if he didnt
IF(mysql_num_rows($result) < 1)
{
//INSERT into DB.
}
ELSE
{
echo "sorry tou can only post every 20 seg.";
}

//*************
Thanks Scott for all the help and support.